Thursday on the RealClearPolitics radio show — weeknights at 6:00 p.m. on SiriusXM’s POTUS Channel 124 and then on Apple, Spotify, and here on our website — Andrew Walworth, Tom Bevan, and Carl Cannon discuss the latest twist in the Jeffrey Epstein saga, the Senate vote to cut federal funding for public broadcasters like PBS and NPR, and a new poll which asks Americans whether they the Trump administration has made their life better or worse so far. After that, Tom Bevan talks to RCP contributor Richard Porter about judges worrying “the administration would disregard rulings of federal courts, leading to a constitutional crisis,” and Carl Cannon talks to RCP contributor Eric Spitz about what the “Big Beautiful Bill” means for future efforts to reduce the national debt. *** First, a new poll from Reuters says only 17% of Americans are satisfied with how President Trump is handling the “Jeffrey Epstein matter.” “The other twist to the story is that Democrats are suddenly all in,” Tom Bevan commented. “They see how this is dividing the MAGA base, and they are 100% invested in making that continue and twisting the knife as far as they can.” “I don’t know if it’s a winning issue… I don’t even think it’s a real scandal, but boy, they love it. It gets good ratings and gins people up. It gets Trump talking about it and makes him look bad,” Cannon added. “You two have forced me at gunpoint to talk about it for the third straight day.” *** Next, around minute 6:30, the Senate moved forward to cut funding for public broadcasters like NPR and PBS, a goal of Republicans since the 1970s “The weird thing about this is that none of this is going to make NPR or PBS go away. The federal funds were a small portion of their overall budget,” Andrew Walworth said. “One downside of this that I’m not sure conservatives have thought through is that once you get rid of any sort of congressional oversight… There will be no controls at all on what NPR and PBS decide to broadcast at this point.” *** After that, around minute 11, a new poll from the Associated Press says 49% of Americans think the Trump administration has done more to hurt them, while only a quarter think his policies have helped. Also, 58% disapprove of Trump’s job as president overall, and 40% approve. “Despite what the Democrats say, by far the largest percentage of Americans receiving tax cuts are working-class people, middle-class people,” Cannon said. “But I think people are worried about these tariffs. They keep hearing that things are going to get worse, and they’re worried.” “Eighty-two percent of Democrats and 55% of Republicans say that Trump’s policies have helped them. But only 28%-or so-of independents,” Tom Bevan added. “I think the jury’s still out on that. They just passed the bill, this was why Republicans were adamant about getting it done by July 4-because some of these policies are going to take some time to ramp up and get into the political bloodstream.” *** And then, at minute 22, Tom Bevan talks to RCP contributor Richard Porter about a memo obtained by The Federalist, from federal judge James Boasberg to Chief Justice John Roberts and other judges worrying that the administration could disregard rulings of federal courts leading to a constitutional crisis: “Memo Reveals D.C. Judges Are Predisposed Against Trump Administration” “It’s a big deal, but it’s not shocking. It’s a little surprising that someone wrote it up,” Porter said. “It’s a window into the challenge the Trump administration faces in dealing with 600 district judges around the country.” “Judges are supposed to reason about the law and persuade about what the right answer is. Their power over the executive is relatively limited,” he said. “And although he’s not happy about it, Trump has been respectful-even of judges who have gone too far. So there’s no case in which Boasberg should have been talking about this. And on top of that, his fear was unfounded. It turns out he was the one acting extralegally, not Trump.” “The deeper problem, one I don’t know where it ends, starts with an ideology that’s taken hold in law schools over the last 50 years: critical legal studies,” he said. “You have people who are more self-consciously adopting political viewpoints, because that’s what they learned in law school!” “What Trump is really good at is getting people to reveal who they really are, and I think that’s what we see with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. Once you reject the rule of law as an ideology, and instead believe that being a judge gives you a platform to express your opinions, you’ve moved away from dispassionate judicial review,” Porter said. “Instead, the judge is saying they are the manifestation of the law. The way Fauci said, ‘I am science,’ Ketanji Brown Jackson is essentially saying, ‘I am law.’ That creates the idea of judicial supremacy-rule by judges.” *** In the next segment, starting at minute 34, Carl Cannon talks to RCP contributor Eric Spitz about the Big Beautiful Bill and what it means for future legislators’ ability to reduce the national debt. His new piece is: “America’s New Fiscal Trap” “Say what you want about the chaos, he’s starting to get stuff done,” Spitz said about Trump. “When you double the size of the standard deduction, you take the number of people who don’t qualify to pay taxes from 60% of our economy to up near 70. That means that you are concentrating the main payments on fewer and fewer people, knowing that the top 1% is contributing 25%. But then everybody from that point down to the 30% left from the 70 is left to carry the rest of the economic tax burden.” “This big beautiful bill really solidified some of the things, put them into law-like the taxes, right? That was going to be back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, when the Dems had it, when the Republicans had it. If he just left it as a sunset issue, but he didn’t. So now he’s moved the goalposts. And now we’re negotiating from the point where this is a permanent issue.” “Trump’s fight with Jerome Powell isn’t just personal; cutting rates is the only lever he has left to make the deficit look manageable,” he said. “Everyone’s fighting over 5% of the budget. Discretionary spending is a rounding error compared to entitlements and debt payments. That’s what makes this situation so dangerous.” *** Don’t miss a single episode of the RealClearPolitics weeknight radio show – subscribe at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
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